Want to be a Welsh Politician? Change your name to Elwyn Davies.

We asked our survey respondents about all four types of elected politician we have in Wales above the level of councillor – MPs, constituency AMs, regional AMs and MEPs. I will now present some of the main results that these questions produced.

74% failed to get even one right though this time I accept that the name prompt did not help

The Names were randomised so it might be helpful to know a breakdown on a consituency basis where the strength of certain parties and I am sure how someone could get two correct and one correct unless they tried to name more than two actual regiaonal AM

NAME OF ONE OF ACTUAL REGIONAL AMS

NAME OF A SECOND ACTUAL REGIONAL AM

Robert Myers

Mohammed Salim

Sara Burns

Carys Price

But the real shocker was the failure of the respondents to recognize even one of the four MEPs

Name Recognition for Welsh MEPs

Response

%

Both correct, none incorrect

2%

One correct, none incorrect

14%

Two correct, at least one incorrect

1%

One correct, at least one incorrect

3%

At least one incorrect, none correct

18%

No response

63%

NAME OF ONE OF ACTUAL MEP

NAME OF A SECOND ACTUAL MEP

David Sherwood

Elwyn Davies

Lynn Goodwin

Jenny Green

This time we were given the actual figures for recognition

Name Recognition for Individual MEPs/False Names

Name % Selected

Derek Vaughan 9%

Nathan Gill 16%

Kay Swinburne 6%

Jill Evans 11%

David Sherwood 5%

Elwyn Davies 12%

Lynn Goodwin 5%

Jenny Green 5%

Again these were randomised so it might be interesting to see where where the names were changed

Nathan Gill tops the list though this might well be his recent high profile that his election to the assembly and the subsequent publicity gave him

Second was the fictitious Elwyn Davies on 12% where I suspect his name led some wrongly guessing that he was aPlaid MEP rather than the long serving Jill Evans on 11%

Labour Derek Vaughn on 9& and the Tories Kim Swinbourne on 6% fared even worse.

Does this show a failure of our political parties to communicate or apathy amongst voters.

I suspect the latter

It a pity that the participants weren't asked if they voted in any of the elections above and f there was any correlation between recognition of politicians and actual voting ,

In the meantime If I was an aspiring politician I might well consider changing my name to Elwyn Davies by Deed Poll.

1 comment:

is it time to admit defeat?, the majority of Welsh people neither know or care about Welsh history and culture and its contribution to the world and they care even less about Welsh politics which is a laughing stock, even after the calamity of Trump's election and Brexit.